My first encounter with death was, when I was seven years old. My paternal grand-father died in an awful accident. On his work a heavy metal plate fell from a crane on him and he died sometime later in hospital. I remember that the whole family was upset and that at night I was laying in bed thinking about death. We children had been told that our grand-father was now in heaven, but the way the grown up people behaved, I knew that this was very serious and also, as I loved my grand-father it was difficult to understand that I never would see him again.
About the same time my parents marriage crashed completely and my father left my mother (he was a heavy drinker at that time). So she was alone with three little girls (I am the eldest) and the fourth one under way. Our life changed completely. Mother had to work, she started a small business in another town, in the house where we were living, what helped her to be around when we came home from school. Life was very difficult for her, but also for us. But she managed to raise us, with much work and stress. She was often exhausted, depressed, angry. My only way to escape when the situation became too bad was reading books. When I had a book I could experience the biggest adventures and forget of misery an everything else. I started to read books at seven and never stopped reading during my whole life until today.
When I was fifteen my mother made me stop school and I had to get a job, as she needed this money. I could understand this decision, even though I would have liked to continue school. Not that I was so very diligent, but I knew that I would have had a diploma, and that this was important for my future jobs. Fortunately the school I had been to, was a commercial school, and I had been able to learn the basics of English for two years. (Here I have to insert, that in Luxembourg we speak Luxembourgish, but we start school, with reading and writing in German, then from the second school year on, there comes also French, which at that time was quite heavy, but what I now consider as one of my biggest assets.) Anyhow, as I knew that I could not continue my school, I decided that I didn't want to loose the English language, and so I started reading newspapers, magazines, and books in this language. What I didn't understand right away I guessed from the sense of the sentence.

Another thing that had an impact on me, was when my mother told me something, what had happened to her fathers sisters my Great-aunts (I never knew any of them as they died before I was born). At that time they must have been in their late teens. It's a very strange story.
The two sisters were walking one day (1890+ or so) in the vineyards along the river Mosel, and it was a beautiful day. And as they were strolling leisurely they started to hear voices praying, like people that are praying in a procession, many voices repeating all the time the same prayers. They wondered, as they were quite religious people and had a good knowledge about when processions were due in the year, and here they didn't know anything about. So they started to look around in the direction where the voices came from, wanting to see the procession and the people. Meanwhile the voices came nearer and nearer, and as they still couldn't see anybody, they began to feel fear. When the voices were close by, both of them fell on their knees completely scared and prayed together with the invisible procession, with the voices passing them and while they went ever farther away, the voices became ever less audible until they couldn't hear anything anymore. Under deep shock the two girls went home telling their family what happened. And as was usual in those times they went to see the priest of the village, but he didn't know about a procession. After some search in old church documents in the following time, he found out that some 200 or 300 years before (I have no idea when this was exactly) there actually was a procession on that date in the year. It was a procession praying for help against pest disease.

When I was 17 we moved to another town, there I met my husband and four years later we married.
Two years after that, I started working for an airline company and my decision not to loose the knowledge of the English, was what made it possible. In 1978 my family and I went to Florida for vacation (free ticket), and at the airport on the way back home I saw a small booklet called 'Life after life', from Dr. Moody, and so I came to know about NDEs. I wasn't sure if what was written in that book was true, but I thought by myself 'If this is true, then I get to know more about this'. At that time, no internet, but more and more books covered the phenomena and were translated in German, which is the language that comes easiest, except my own language.
Somewhere end of the 1990s I had myself a small experience. I don't know the exact date.
I was always interested in science, biology and technology, was always reading about everything. I had been thinking about the energy of thought, wondering if a thought would only exist of the energy that had been used in the brain to think it, or if it had an energy of its own even after it was out of my brain.
Sometime later I was sitting outside, it was a bright summer day, I looked at our grass in the garden, there was the smell of flowers, I heard the bees and flies humming, and the birds singing, and got into a non thinking state. Suddenly, the light of the sun got a different shade of color and I immediately KNEW that every thought I had been thinking in my whole life was still existing, I KNEW that the Universe was one enormous Unity (Oneness), (like a body of some kind) that nothing got ever lost and that I and the world and everything were an integral part of this Unity. I KNEW that I could not die, because my energy or the energy that made my being, was the same as the universe, that everything is exchange of information. And in that moment I felt an enormous happiness, joy, and I was ready to surrender myself to 'All that is'.
Then the light of the sun got its original color back and I was snapping back into reality and started wondering 'Hey what was this?' But the joy and happiness stayed for a longer period. I don't know how long this experience lasted, I guess between a few seconds to about half a minute. I must say that at the time I didn't know what happened, I had no name to put on it. (Today I know that it is called STE). And of course our rational brain starts to doubt, discarding it as a daydream of some kind. Our daily duties take over and destroy some of the magic of the moment. But afterwards I also had the firm conviction that plants, and trees, and nature and even stones and atoms had a certain kind of consciousness. But I kept searching more and more in that direction, discovering Quantum physics on the way.
On Pentecost in 2006 I discovered a small lump in my breast, and at the visit with my gynecologist, he made an ultrasound check and said to me, 'It doesn't look good it has a strong blood flow going through'. And at that moment I knew that it was cancer, as I knew that only cancer lumps increase their blood flow in breast cancer. After some inquiries with some friends of mine that also had had breast cancer, I decided that I wanted the breast amputated. I must say that to my own amazement I wasn't scared of the cancer, I never any minute got shocked or depressed by this. I took all the decisions, quite cool as if it didn't concern me, together with my husband. When after the results of the biopsy the cancer was definitely confirmed, we had to talk again to the doctor, and he was paging me, that he could take away only part of the breast or the whole breast, and he was extremely relieved when I told him, that we had decided to get it completely amputated. I wasn't scared of dying. My reflection was: 'If this will be the beginning of the end , well then be it so! But!!! I want to live and take as many chances to live as possible!!!'
As my hobby is painting, I had taken engagements for two courses for mid July 2006. I decided not to cancel them and not to spoil myself by playing sick, and so 14 days after the surgery I went to my courses. It was a bit difficult as my right arm wasn't working fine yet, but I managed to work it out.

This disease coincided with the cancer of a very good friend of ours. He and his wife have been friends since over forty years. He asked me if I wouldn't like to join a Qi Gong course in our commune. And I joined the course and discovered in the person of our teacher a spiritual master. Our friend unfortunately didn't survive his cancer, he died in 2012. My cancer has not come back until today. I do not think of it and don't worry about it.
In Qi Gong after every course we had a meditation and in one of the meditations I had an experience, I saw a light rising behind my spine from below, and I could see my spine like a black shade, vertebra by vertebra (back lighted by this light as it was rising) and then it entered my head. And I was observing this with amazement and really didn't know what this was about. I was told that it was a paranormal experience. It never happened a second time. Due to Qi Gong and those experiences I was drawn stronger towards spiritual things and searched more or less randomly in the internet.

And so one day in January 2013, I came upon NDERF home page.
I read some of the NDEs, I saw that it was not a 'commercial something' site, then I read that they were looking for translators, and I decided that I would volunteer, because I knew that I could do this. My spoken English is not so good anymore, but I'm good in writing. Today I have translated some 400 NDEs and am willed to continue as long as possible, as I think this phenomenon is something that should be made available to as many people as possible.
Now after having translated so many NDEs I feel very connected to those people experiencing them, especially when they say: 'I knew, but don't know how I knew'.
This is like an echo of how I experienced this upcoming knowledge in my own experience.
I feel very close to the NDErs, and as the stories are so varied it is always surprising what people experience, but I also can catch the deep message that they bring along.